A Symphony of Echoes (The Chronicles of St Mary's, #2)
by Jodi Taylor
Prologue
One of the best things about our job is that if you live long enough, you get to choose your last jump.
One of the worst things about our job is that, so far, no one has lived long enough to get to choose their last jump.
The last jump is supposed to be a quiet reward – the chance to enjoy a favourite moment in history – to visit Agincourt perhaps, or see Antony and Cleopatra floating down the Nile, or to hear Elizabeth I addressing the troops at Tilbury. To witness some epoch-making event of your choice. To fulfil a lifelong ambition.
In short, it’s supposed to be enjoyable.
It is not supposed to be a whirling nightmare of blood and pain and terror.
It is not supposed to be about savage butchery, mutilation, beheading, and having half your face ripped off.
It is not supposed to be about dying in a blood-drenched pod, trapped with a monster and no way out.
It is not supposed to be about the paralysing horror of seeing your best friend ripped open to the bone and having to put her out of her pain.
It is not supposed to be about being abandoned and never seeing the sun again.
It’s not supposed to be about any of that.
Chapter One
God only knew where we were, we couldn’t see a thing. A real pea-souper. I said, ‘Do you know where we are?’
‘Well,’ said Kal, ‘we’re in Whitechapel, in the right place at the right time. It’s about eleven o’clock on the night of 8th November 1888. Not bad, eh? More accurate than I thought weA would be. I suggest we tuck ourselves away in a pub somewhere and wait and see what happens. They say that tonight’s is his last victim. Maybe that’s because he gets to meet us in a dark alley.’
‘We can’t kill him,’ I said, alarmed.
‘No, but we could certainly scare the living crap out of him.’
I considered. That sounded good.
I’d read around the subject. Jack the Ripper famously terrorised London in the summer and autumn of 1888. There were eleven murders altogether, although only five are generally credited to the Ripper – Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth White, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Kelly. Kelly was murdered and horrifically mutilated in the very early hours of the 9th November, 1888 and although there were other killings afterwards, she was generally reckoned to be his last victim. She had lived in Miller’s Court, off Dorset Road, and that was where we were headed.
Contrary to popular belief, we historians aren’t completely stupid. We may have looked like a couple of poor but honest shop girls, but the amount of weaponry we had stashed around our persons was considerable. Although if the combined forces of H Division, the City of London police, and Scotland Yard themselves had failed to catch the Ripper, there was very little chance of us doing so. For Kal, this was a long-held ambition and her last jump. For me, it was just an adventure. I don’t think either of us actually expected to see him.
We headed for the Ten Bells where Kelly was supposed to have spent her last evening. She left, late, to walk the streets, and she would take a man back to her tiny room. Her body would be discovered the next morning by Thomas Bowyer calling for the rent.
It was hopeless. The pub was heaving. There was no way we could pick her out. There could have been twenty Mary Kellys in there and we didn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves by asking around.
Despite the November chill, the inside was hot, steamy, and smelled strongly of people and drink. We ordered a gin each and wedged ourselves in the corner where we got talking to a very jolly man, George Carter.
‘Carter by name, carter for gain!’ he said cheerfully, ‘and my wife, Dolly.’
It turned out he knew the two men who’d discovered Mary Nichols.
‘A shocking thing,’ he said, draining his glass and wiping his mouth. ‘Can I get you ladies anything?’
We declined politely, but he had plenty more to say about the ‘Autumn of Terror’ as it was dubbed by the newspapers and recited details with relish and at great length.